Main Feature 1Growing Pains: A Telescopic Tale

BSHS News 4Legacy Scheme

Monographs Sale

Committee Positions Available

Outreach and Education

BSHS Grant Reports 6

Reports of Meetings 7Scientific Instruments Symposium

History of Science Society

Readers’ Views 9Response to ‘Science on Screen’

Oudated Newtonian Adulation

Reviews 10

Anniversaries for 2010 12

The Questionnaire 14

News, Listings 15

BJHS, Viewpoint, BSHS info. 16

Contents

ISSN: 1751-8261

NO. 88: FEBRUARY 2009

Fig. 1

Frontispiece

to Benjamin

Martin’s The

Young Gentle-

man and Lady’s

Philosophy

(London, 1759)

© National Mari-

time Museum,

Greenwich,

London.

Growing Pains: A Telescopic TaleRichard Dunn uses popular visual culture to describe the

reception of the telescope

While 2009 has been designated International Year of Astronomy, last autumn also marked

the 400th anniversary of the invention of its iconic tool, the telescope. That is, we know that

in September and October 1608 three different men arrived in The Hague asking for a pat-

ent for a new optical device, the instrument that Galileo made famous a year and a half later

when he published a series of surprising astronomical discoveries. We don’t now question the

importance of this technological innovation, but it is not hard to find a time when people still

questioned the benefit of telescopic instruments.

This piece looks at the period from about 1730 to 1820, when the notion of science as a legit-

imate discipline was still emerging, and looks at three representations of telescopes and their

imagined users from popular visual culture. Even in this period, science and its tools had to be

carefully represented as safe and legitimate by its advocates. For some, the key was to present

what Alice Walters has called a ‘polite science’. For others, however, science and its technologies

were subject to much more impolite depictions. These images show, therefore, that even after

200 years of practical use, the telescope had not outgrown the concerns of earlier years.

EditorialWelcome to 2009, the year in which we

celebrate both the 200th birthday of

Charles Darwin and the 150th anniver-

sary of the publication of The Origin of the

Species, and also the International Year of

Astronomy. Richard Dunn introduces us to

the latter theme with his feature article on

the reception of the telescope. Anniversa-

ries for 2010 are also included in this issue

enabling preparation of more history of

science events next year.

This is my first issue as Editor, having

assisted Rebekah Higgitt for the last two

years. I cannot thank Rebekah enough

for her mentorship throughout, and her

support and advice in putting Viewpoint 88

together. She is the subject of this issue’s

‘Questionnaire’.

Also included are several news items and

reports regarding BSHS activities, opportu-

nities and grants awarded, reports of meet-

ings and reviews, and the very welcome

views of our readers. Contributions to the

next issue should be sent to newsletter@

bshs.org.uk by 17 April 2009.

Rosemary Wall, Editor

Viewpoint No. 88 2

For advocates of the new, specifically New-

tonian, science of the eighteenth century, the

frontispiece to Benjamin Martin’s Young Gen-

tleman and Lady’s Philosophy (1759) says it all

(Fig. 1). It appeared in one of many books that

sought to popularize science as something

that gentlemen and gentlewomen should

know about and could discuss in public – a

worthy subject of polite conversation. Science,

these books suggest, is a safe domestic activ-

ity that is as much about morals and manners

as stars and space.

In Martin’s frontispiece Cleonicus and his

sister Euphrosyne, whose dialogue forms

the book’s narrative, sit in a library or draw-

ing room with a telescope and celestial

globe prominently displayed between them.

The message is clear. Fine instruments are

the appropriate tools of a dignified form of

learning entirely suited to this genteel class.

It is a message that echoes throughout the

text, which stresses that the knowledge such

instruments reveal is useful and moral. By

revealing the workings of God’s universe,

it strengthens religious faith and enhances

one’s social standing. So while Euphrosyne

worries that it might seem ‘masculine for a

Woman to talk of Philosophy in Company’,

Cleonicus reassures her that such knowledge

is a womanly accomplishment that may even

improve her marriage prospects. The scien-

tifically learned Euprepia, he points out, is

now ‘admired, esteemed and beloved by all

Gentlemen of Discernment’. One can hardly

imagine a greater contrast to a generation

earlier, when James Miller’s The Humours of

Oxford (1730) mock-

ingly advised that,

‘a woman makes as

ridiculous a Figure,

poring over Globes, or

thro’ a Telescope, as a

Man would with a Pair

of Preservers mend-

ing Lace.’

What is also impor-

tant in Martin’s work

is that the image and

text emphasize the

specific deployment

of very real instru-

ments in the learn-

ing process. It is a

strategy that appears

in many other works

of the period, each

evoking seemingly

real instruments in

plausible settings. In

1745, for example, the

titular heroine of Eliza

Heywood’s Female

Spectator visits the

country house of their

Pearl, a Writing-desk, Book-case, and a dozen

of Chairs’. Other texts went further, encourag-

ing readers to purchase specific instruments,

such as Charles Leadbetter’s A Compleat Sys-

tem of Astronomy (1728), which recommends a

Gregorian telescope eighteen inches long and

three inches in diameter (Fig. 2) as essential

for anyone wishing to become a ‘Compleat

Astronomer’. Leadbetter also mentioned that

such telescopes were available to the public

for six guineas. It was no coincidence that

many of the authors sold instruments.

But while science’s apologists presented a

polite activity with fine accoutrements that

were both tools of learning and physical

emblems of material wealth and taste, those

who wished to oppose or simply make fun

of this modish learning had ample opportu-

nity to deploy the same instruments in their

own rhetoric. Nowhere was this clearer than

in the thriving satirical print tradition of the

Georgian era. Robert Sayer’s ‘Viewing the

Transit of Venus’ (1793; Fig. 3), produced some

time after the transits of 1761 and 1769, lays a

hint of sexual impropriety over the proceed-

ings, a rather degraded version of Martin’s

frontispiece. Like Martin’s, the image appears

to show a conversation or dialogue between

a gentleman and a gentlewoman, but we can

no longer be sure that it is a morally safe form

of social intercourse between brother and

sister. The woman has become both active

viewer and passively viewed, while the statue

of the satyr underlines a more lustful reading

of the man’s intentions. One can imagine that

as he gently fingers the telescope’s tube, with

its obvious comparison to what was known

society’s president with her three assistants.

There they observe the heavens through a

36-foot telescope on a ‘large Stand with all

its Screws, Pins, and Levers’. This is housed

in a neighbouring gentleman’s ‘very spa-

cious’ observatory, evocatively described as

containing ‘two Pair of very fine Globes, set

on Pedestals of Ebony, inlaid with Mother of

Fig. 2 Gregorian reflecting telescope, by James Short,

c.1752–6 (National Maritime Museum AST0942) © National

Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

Fig. 3 ‘Viewing the Transit of Venus’, by Robert Sayer, 1793.

Viewpoint No. 88 3

as the ‘staff of life’, the man is anticipating a

more sexually thrilling transit, a transgression,

of his earthly Venus. The fact that the planet’s

name recalls the goddess of love, beauty and

fertility, whose amorous encounters filled the

pages of classical mythology, only adds to the

reading. What Sayer offers is most certainly an

impolite science.

Another twenty years later, we can still find

the telescope at the butt end of English satire,

this time in a scene from Thomas Rowland-

son’s The English Dance of Death (1815–16;

Fig. 4). The work appeared as two volumes

of humorous scenes, each accompanied by a

verse narrative composed by William Combe.

While the scenes draw on a much older tradi-

tion showing a skeletal Death ‘conducting

persons of all Ranks, Conditions and Ages, to

the Tomb’, Rowlandson has brought his up

to date and anglicized them, with portray-

als such as ‘The Toastmaster’, ‘The Insurance

Office’ and ‘The Lottery Office’. Nonetheless,

the humour remains antiquated, with ‘The

Astronomer’ relying on a view of science and

its practitioners from a century and a half

earlier. Master Senex, the astronomer of the

title, echoes the image of the dabbler in natu-

ral philosophy lampooned in 17th-century

satires like Thomas Shadwell’s The Virtuoso

(1676) and Aphra Behn’s The Emperor of the

Moon (1687). Like their targets, Senex is lost

in his studies and only cares for knowledge

for its own sake: just as Shadwell’s Sir Nicholas

Gimcrack admitted that, ‘virtuosos never find

out anything of use, ’tis not our way’, so Senex

‘never for one moment thought / But of the

sciences he taught: / He never did the fancy

seize / Of ploughing land, or planting trees’.

Senex’s rather inaccurately depicted

telescope is a prominent centrepiece of a

ramshackle collection of observing and other

instruments. It is also a perfect symbol of

the astronomer’s detachment from reality,

since one uses it to look away from Earth.

This was a point Jonathan Swift also made

nearly a century earlier in Gulliver’s Travels

(1726), with his Grand Academy in Laputa full

of absentminded philosophers. The powerful

telescopes with which they spend ‘the great-

est Part of their Lives in observing the celestial

Bodies’ emphasize the Laputans’ disengage-

ment from the real world. Rowlandson’s

astronomer is similarly blind to more earthly

domestic happenings in his own household,

having failed to notice the bare-breasted

woman and her companion behind the cur-

tain (a hint of other things the old man may

be missing).

Echoing one of the themes of The English

Dance of Death, that you may just get what

you are foolish enough to wish for, the astron-

omer finally gets his heart’s desire, to make a

great discovery, although it is not one that will

be of further use or bring him lasting fame:

“O this will be a precious boon!

Herschell’s Volcanos in the Moon,

Are nought to this,” Old Senex said,

“My fortune is for ever made.”

“It is, indeed,” a voice replied;

The Old Man heard it – terrified;

And, as Fear threw him to the ground,

Through the long tube Death gave the

wound.

Despite the efforts of the apologists for sci-

ence, the virtuoso and his instruments of dis-

traction still had currency in 1815. To Martin

and others, the telescope was a valuable tool

for a scientific learning that was domestically

safe and morally above reproach. In the hands

of the satirists, its use was morally suspect and

of questionable social value. Ridicule was a fair

response.

Further reading:

Roslynn Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove.

Representations of the Scientist in Western

Literature (Baltimore & London, 1994);

Marjorie Nicholson, Science and Imagination

(New York, 1956);

Alice Walters, ‘Conversation Pieces: Science

and Politeness in Eighteenth-century England’,

History of Science, 35 (1997), pp. 121–154.

Richard Dunn, National Maritime Museum,

Greenwich, London

rdunn@nmm.ac.uk

Richard Dunn’s book, The Telescope: A Short

History, will be published in March by the

National Maritime Museum.

Fig. 4 ‘The Astronomer’, from The English Dance of Death, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1815.

Viewpoint No. 88 4

BSHS News

Legacy Scheme

Different Ways of leaving a gift to the SocietyThe legacy scheme enables members to leave a gift to the Society in their will. There are different ways of leaving a gift, including —

Steps in making a willLegacies are set out when making a will which will cost about £100. The following steps should be taken —

gages or loans;

Changes to an existing willIf you have an existing will you do not have to rewrite your will completely in order to add a gift to the Society. This can be achieved through

adding a codicil to your existing will. A codicil is a supplement which changes or amends part of the will. If you wish to change your will sub-

stantially, it is advisable that you contact your solicitor and have the will rewritten to include all your changes in a new document.

Further advice and informationIf you have any questions or require further advice please contact the Society’s Executive Secretary in the first instance. Lucy Tetlow, PO Box

3401, Norwich, NR7 7JF; office@bshs.org.uk

Monographs Sale

BSHS is delighted to announce a sale of its monographs. From 15 October, prices are

reduced. Save 50% on volumes 1-12. Our latest volume, Chang and Jackson’s (2007) An

Element of Controversy, has been reduced in price from £22.00 to £15.00. Postal charges

remain as usual.

For full details, consult the BSHS Website or e-mail the Executive Secretary.

Hurray! This is a limited time offer. Some monographs already are in short supply,

Joe Cain, Monograph Series Editor.

PS: Don’t forget your library — ask them to order copies of missing volumes. This will

ensure their long-term availability.

Titles in the series

13 An Element of Controversy: The Life of Chlorine in Science, Medicine, Technology and

War. Hasok Chang and Catherine Jackson, editors. 2007.

12 To See the Fellows Fight: Eye Witness Accounts of Meetings of the Geological Society

of London and Its Club, 1822-1868. John C. Thackray, editor. 2003.

11 Science in Art: Works in the National Gallery that illustrate the History of Science and

Technology. JV Field and Frank AJL James. 1997.

10 E. Ray Lankester and the Making of Modern British Biology. Joe Lester and Peter Bowler. 1995.

09 In the Shadow of Lavoisier: The ‘Annales de Chimie’ and the Establishment of a New Science. Maurice Crosland. 1994.

08 Science and Nature: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences. Michael Shortland, editor. 1993.

07 Index to the Scientific Correspondence of John William Dawson. Susan Sheets-Pyenson. 1992.

06 Archives of the British Chemical Industry, 1750-1914: A Handlist. Peter J. T. Morris and Colin A. Russell; John Graham Smith, editor. 1988.

05 Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy: A New Source. A Transcription of Manuscript Hardwick 72A with translation and commentary.

Graham Rees, assisted by Christopher Upton. 1984.

04 The Royal Society and Its Fellows, 1660-1700: The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution. Michael Hunter. 1982, reprinted 1985,

second edition, 1994.

03 Rationality and Ritual: The Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Britain. Brian Wynne. 1982.

02 The Letters of Georges Cuvier: A Summary Calendar of the Manuscript and Printed Materials preserved in Europe, the United States of

America, and Australasia. Dorinda Outram, editor. 1980.

01 Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences. LJ Jordanova and Roy Porter, editors. 1979, reprinted

1981, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, 1997.

Viewpoint No. 88 5

The BSHS Strolling Players performed ‘The

Business of Bodies’ at the British Association

Festival of Science on the 9th and 10th Sep-

tember, in Liverpool. The event was developed

for the Young People’s programme and dealt

with grave-robbing in the city during the

1820’s. As with other British cities, grave-

robbing had become a particular problem

in Liverpool by this period as the demand

for cadavers for teaching anatomy to medi-

cal students was high but the availability of

corpses through legal means was low. The

aim of the event was to educate the young

audience about this episode in the history of

medicine and to allow them to consider the

legal and ethical issues that were raised by the

emergence of a medical training based on the

study of human anatomy in the late 18th and

early 19th centuries.

The dramatisation developed by the Stroll-

ing Players used the device of a courtroom

and the Strolling Players took on the roles

of barristers, judge, and an arrested man.

Four witnesses were called to testify: a night

watchman, employed to watch the graves of

the recently deceased; a strange woman who

claimed her nocturnal wanderings in cemeter-

ies were for the purposes of studying bats;

a doctor who was possibly involved in the

illegal trade in bodies, and the doctor’s house-

keeper. The young people acted as the jury in

the court case with responsibility for deciding

the fate of the individual accused of grave

robbing. In order to help make some difficult

material more accessible to the audience of

11-14 year olds ,the court case was preceded

by a short film made by the Strolling Players

which portrayed the events which had led to

the arrest of the accused man.

The Strolling Players had a schedule of

six performances over two days. On four

occasions the jury found the accused man

innocent and on the two occasions that the

grave robber was found guilty the audience

requested that he be sentenced with some

leniency. Each event was preceded by a

short introduction and followed by a discus-

sion with the audience. It was clear from the

discussion that the audience believed that the

accused man had been driven to his crime by

his difficulties in finding work and the need

to feed his family, and felt he was not the real

ringleader of the gang of body-snatchers. The

audience showed very little

sympathy for the arguments

made by the doctor that his

involvement in the trade in

cadavers was an unfortunate

necessity as it was essential

that students training to be

surgeons learnt anatomy

from a human corpse. The

young people were clear that

had the doctor been on trial

they would have sent him

down.

The quality of response

from the audience and the

feedback from adults in the

room showed the event to

be extremely successful.

The views expressed by the

young people during their deliberations as a

jury and in the final discussion demonstrated

a new understanding of the history of medical

education, of the unexpected ways in which

medicine has affected the lives of everyday

people and the difficult ethical issues that may

be raised by medical science.

The Strolling Players are keen to take this

event to new audiences, both young and

adults, and would be very pleased to hear

from individuals or institutions interested in

staging a performance of ‘The Business of

Bodies’. The final cut of the film made for this

event can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/

watch?v=dkI_n4hNJ6s.

Sabine Clarke, University of Oxford

sabine.clarke@wuhmo.ox.ac.uk

Outreach and Education Committee: ‘The Business of Bodies’Sabine Clarke describes the latest activities of the BSHS Strolling Players

LEUCHA VENEER

Can You Communicate HSTM? If So, Your Society Needs You!

There are two exciting opportunities available on the Communications Co-ordination Committee

The BSHS is looking for a new editor for Viewpoint. Re-launched

in its new format in 2006, the newsletter has been highly suc-

cessful and is well-supported by the Society’s Council and members.

The Editor is responsible for commissioning, co-ordinating

and designing content for the three annual issues of Viewpoint.

Applicants should therefore have good contacts within the BSHS

and the wider history of science community and be confident in

using or learning to use the computer design packages InDesign

and Adobe Photoshop.

The appointee will, in the first instance shadow the current

Editor and act as her assistant. Enquiries to the current and

former editor are welcomed: please contact

newsletter@bshs.org.uk.

The BSHS is looking for a new Communications secretary to strength-

en its relationship with the media.

The Communications Secretary is the Society's point of contact for

the media, responsible for fielding general enquiries and for notifying

journalists through an online press service of forthcoming BSHS events,

books and research findings of the society's members. Ideally, appli-

cants should have good contacts within the BSHS, some knowledge of

the media and an interest in communicating history of science to the

widest possible audience.

The appointee will, in the first instance shadow the current Com-

munications Secretary and act as his assistant. Enquiries to the current

Communications Secretary are welcomed: please contact

media@bshs.org.uk.

L-R, back row: James Sumner, Julia Hyland, Tom Lean,

Sabine Clarke. Front row: Mike Brown, Miguel Garcia-

Sancho, Melanie Keene and Leucha Veneer.

Both officers will be members of the BSHS Communication Co-ordination Committee which meets three times a year. The

deadline for applications for both positions is 6 March 2009

Council hope to make appointments in the spring of 2009.

Editor of Viewpoint Communications Secretary

Viewpoint No. 88 6

Studying for an MSc at the

London Centre

In 2007 I was awarded a BSHS bursary for

a Masters with the London Centre. It was a

rewarding year, during which I developed my

understanding of both the historiography

and history of science, medicine and technol-

ogy significantly. I feel that I benefited greatly

from the wide range of resources, particularly

archival material, to be found in and around

History of Science, Technology

and Medicine as an aid for

health policy?

Having been awarded a BSHS MSc bursary in

2007, it is a pleasure for me to share some of

my experiences during my Manchester MSc

in HSTM.

During the MSc I gained a general introduc-

tion to HSTM, and specialised in the history of

medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries. For

my dissertation, I tried to integrate my previ-

ously gained knowledge in the field of health

care organisation and my newly acquired

historical knowledge.

Several months later I completed a thesis

‘On Specialist Cancer Hospitals, Cancer Policies

and Health Care Systems – A Comparative

History of the Developments in England and

the Netherlands in the Period 1980 – 2007’.

The Christie Hospital in Manchester and

in Amsterdam were the specialist cancer

hospitals investigated. I tried to relate the

national developments of cancer policy to the

situations of the two specialist cancer hospi-

tals, and to show how the resulting historical

narratives could be of value to health care

policy makers.

Some of the conclusions of my thesis are

worth mentioning. Firstly, both countries

saw an evolution from advisory reports in

the 1980s to more comprehensive strategies

for cancer control since 2000. However, the

temporal paths of the development of these

policies were different. Secondly, despite

increasing international influences, the

content of the cancer policies in England and

the Netherlands did not converge. Until about

2000, the developments in both specialist can-

cer hospitals were mainly driven by general

health care policy. Since then, cancer policies

have directly influenced Christie Hospital,

while comparable influences of the Dutch

policies were not found. Finally, the investiga-

tion showed that history could be a useful tool

for health policy makers, because historical

narratives can show them, for example, how

windows of opportunity might arise - on dif-

ferent paths following various temporalities.

Comparative history is certainly not easy,

but I found it stimulating and intellectually

satisfying. Very recent history can also be

problematic, but again, the interactions with

the ‘actors’ and the potential for utility made

the effort worthwhile.

Currently, I am finishing an education

programme which I had started before I

enrolled for the MSc in HSTM. Though I have

not yet decided on what type of job I want to

pursue in the future, I expect that sensitivity to

historical backgrounds and temporal aspects

of developments should do no harm.

Ellen van Reuler

a.a.h.e.vanreuler@alumnus.utwente.nl

Science and society in 19th

century Ireland

Last fall I received a grant from the BSHS

which helped me to research the final

chapters of my first monograph and to delve

further into a study of the Eozoon canadense

controversy. I would like to pay a special trib-

ute to the BSHS for contributing to my child-

care costs while I conducted the research. I

think this represents an enlightened approach

to funding and I hope it will be emulated

elsewhere.

As for the results of my study, I will just

highlight some of the interesting material that

I was able to obtain from the St Bride Library,

London, on the Eozoon controversy. Eozoon

was discovered in the Laurentian limestone

formations during the Canadian geological

survey in the early 1860s and in 1864 was

claimed by John William Dawson and William

Benjamin Carpenter to be the oldest known

forminifera fossil and possibly the oldest

organism yet discovered. This announce-

ment began a prolonged controversy in

which the primary opponents to the organic

origin of Eozoon were two professors in the

Thomas Rowney. Much of the controversy

was conducted in the pages of the Annals and

Magazine of Natural History, the archives of

which are in the St Bride Library.

The letters which I have examined from

the library were written by both sides to the

editor of the journal, William Francis. They are

quite revealing of the important role which

Francis played in shaping the controversy by

what he chose to publish and in what manner.

Drafts of replies which Francis wrote implor-

ing particular individuals to tone-down their

language are surprising, given the amount of

‘intemperate’ language which he seemed to

print without question. Francis was clearly

on friendly terms with one anti-Eozoonist,

Henry Carter, and appears to have given more

weight to this side of the story than other

publications. The letters give further weight

to my suspicion that the Annals was not at all

opposed to controversy and in fact seemed

to support it by sending each side advanced

Grant Reports

The BSHS operates a variety of grant schemes — bursaries for Masters degrees, research and special

project grants, Butler-Eyles grants for students’ travel to BSHS conferences, and care grants to

enable parents to more easily attend BSHS conferences.

See www.bshs.org.uk/bshs/grants for details.

Juliana Adelman , Ellen van Reuler and Emily Hankin report on how they have been assisted by the

grant schemes.

copies of the other’s papers and encouraging

prompt retorts. Thanks to Jim Secord for alert-

ing me to the records at the St. Bride Library.

In addition to discovering new material

relating to Eozoon, I was able to research

a new chapter for my monograph in the

National Library of Ireland on science and reli-

gion in Irish periodicals. I also received copies

of letters from the British Library which high-

lighted aspects of the religious controversy

surrounding the foundation of the secular and

scientific Queen’s Colleges.

Juliana Adelman

Trinity College Dublin

juliana.adelman@gmail.com

Viewpoint No. 88 7

London as well as the opportunity to work

closely with different tutors from Imperial

College, UCL and Wellcome, who specialised

in a wide variety of topics. In my second

term I chose to take modules on The Scien-

tific Revolution, 1450-1750, The Sciences in

the Age of Industry, 1750-1920, and Ideas

of Health and Sickness. In each module we

profited from the discussions based format

of each session. We were also given many

opportunities to engage in the intellectual

life at a variety of London based institutions

by attending lectures and seminars.

In addition I had the opportunity to

attend the Three Societies Meeting in

Oxford, which was highly informative and

presented a wide range of papers, many of

which proved to be particularly pertinent to

my own research in preparation for writing

my dissertation. It was also a good opportu-

nity to meet academics and hear about their

current research interests.

The subject of my dissertation was ‘John

Tyndall’s Lecture Courses at the Royal

Institution and their Reception in Nine-

teenth Century Britain’. I concluded that

Tyndall’s lecture courses were predomi-

nantly received favourably by the public. An

analysis of attendance figures show that he

became increasingly popular as a lecturer

but did not provide enough entertainment

to retain audience numbers for the duration

of his courses. The reception by scientific

practitioners was more variable. Tyndall

encountered heavy criticisms in relation to

his popularizing activities, particularly with

regard to the perceived neglect of instruc-

tion in favour of theatrical experimental

demonstrations. The lecture courses can also

be situated in a wider social setting through

their coverage in the periodical press. The

decline in reports that occurred can be

linked to institutional changes at the Royal

Institution, which had not only begun to

publish its own proceedings, but which had

also changed its aims to place a renewed

emphasis on research activities. The move

towards research was, most likely, a result

of the need to compete with newly built

sites for science education and research,

and preserve the Royal Institution’s scientific

reputation.

Following completion of the MSc, I

chose to further my studies in the History

of Science and Technology, beginning a

PhD at CHSTM in Manchester in September

2008. I am working on an ESRC-funded

CASE project, with the Science Museum in

London, entitled ‘Buying Modernity? The

Consumer Experience of Domestic Electric-

ity in the Era of the Grid’.

Emily Hankin

University of Manchester

Emily.Hankin@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Reports of MeetingsScientific Instrument Commission Symposium

reviews the 2008

event in Lisbon, 16-21 September

What do artists, scientists and historians have

in common? They were all represented at

the Scientific Instrument Commission (SIC)

Symposium 2008. This was my first SIC meet-

ing, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an

eclectic mix of people from diverse intellec-

tual fields at the 150-strong meeting held at

the Museu de Ciência, University of Lisbon in

September.

Mário Soares, former President of Portu-

gal and former Vice-President of the Euro-

pean Parliament, opened the proceedings

before Ana Eiró, Director of the Museu de

Ciência, welcomed us warmly to her institu-

tion. Beyond the Museum we were genially

received by managers of several collections

across Lisbon, Coimbra and Porto, many of

whom opened their stores especially for SIC

members!

In between museum trips, parallel speaker

sessions covered objects from across Europe,

Asia and the Americas, with many regions

represented across an impressive time period.

In the first session we learnt about the role

of Jews as translators of scientific texts in

11th- and 12th-century Al-Andalus (Elisabeth

Gatti, British Museum), while on the last day

we heard a report on an archive just open-

ing on medical X-radiology in Franco’s Spain

(Pedro Ruiz-Castell, Universitat Autònoma de

Barcelona).

Delegates discussed a range of instruments

including Mars globes (Joshua Nall, University

of Cambridge), photographic lamps (Estela

Jardim, University of Lisbon), natural magnets

(Alison Morrison-Lowe) and even buildings

University of Cambridge). One session

focused on astronomical observatories and

we were also invited to take a closer look at

the architecture of libraries and hidden instru-

mental iconography (Stephen Johnston, Uni-

versity of Oxford). Less conventional scientific

spaces were also considered – sugar factories

(David Singerman, Massachusetts Institute

of Technology), workshops and newspaper

columns (Alexi Baker, University of Oxford)

and the pages of World War II training manu-

als (Robert Hicks, Mütter Museum, College of

Physicians of Philadelphia).

Education was addressed, both as a subject

for historical study and as a current practice.

One talk guided us through the history of a

late 19th-century physics teaching set (Steven

D. Beare, independent researcher). Mod-

ern education was treated in the contexts

of museums (Catherine Cuenca and Daniel

Thoulouze, Musée des arts et metiers, Paris;

Flora Paparou, University of Athens, et al.,

among others) and classrooms – one speaker

reported on the reconstruction of the camera

obscura effect for college students (Elizabeth

Cavicchi, Massachusetts Institute of Tech-

nology). Delegates also learnt about using

instruments in a workshop on navigation on

the Museum roof!

The SIC’s leaders were active participants

throughout. SIC Secretary, Sara Schechner,

gave a talk on the iconography of sundials

that had to be seen to be believed, and Paolo

Brenni, President of the Commission, dis-

cussed the emergence of industrial electrical

measurement instruments from a laboratory

heritage, among other things. The President

also reflected on his experience of the SIC over

its 25-year history, highlighting the continuing

convergence of approaches used by curators

and historians of science.

The President’s comments laid the founda-

tions for the closing plenary session, ‘Reverse

salients in the histories of science and technol-

ogy: A conversation between dinosaurs’. The

Delegates at the

University of Lisbon

(Courtesy of SIC

2008 website).

Viewpoint No. 88 8

‘dinosaurs’ in question were Thomas P. Hughes

(University of Pennsylvania/Massachusetts

Institute of Technology) and John L. Heilbron

(University of California at Berkeley/Univer-

sity of Oxford), with Jim Bennett (Museum of

the History of Science, University of Oxford)

chairing the discussion. Methodology and

the unification of the work of historians with

that of instrument specialists were prominent,

in the addresses and in the ensuing open

discussion.

This year’s SIC Symposium was literally a

huge success. The amount of material cov-

ered in the week is hard to fathom, especially

considering the logistics of accommodat-

ing 150 participants. Many thanks go to the

speakers and collections managers who took

part in the Symposium, and moreover to the

organising committee at the University of Lis-

bon, headed by Marta Lourenço. Never have

so many people been brought into line so

quickly by so feeble a whistle as that wielded

by Marta! On behalf of all the delegates, I

wish to thank her wholeheartedly for such a

rewarding week. The SIC Symposium 2009, to

be held in Budapest, has a lot to live up to!

University of Cambridge

kt271@hermes.cam.ac.uk

History of Science Society and Philosophy of Science Association Joint Conference

Don Leggett reports on the

conference in Pittsburgh, 6th-

9th November

Two days after an historic election, over one-

thousand delegates came together in the cru-

cial battle-state of Pennsylvania for the History

of Science Society (HSS)/Philosophy of Science

Association joint meeting. The wonderful

event arranged by the organising committee

is doubtless testimony to their having spent

as much time in the state over the last months

as the Democratic and Republican campaigns.

But the presidency of the United States was

not the only thing to be awarded in the first

week of November. The HSS recognised the

work of a number of scholars, including Ron-

ald Numbers (University of Wisconsin) for the

Sarton Medal.

The conference began with HSS committee

co-plenaries on education, job creation and

College) and David Pantalony (Canada Science

and Technology Museum) discussed their

experiences teaching object-based history of

science courses, pointing to the problems and

advantages of using museum collections, such

as how the work of undergraduates can help

museums curators to better understand their

expansive holdings. The first day concluded

with a screening of ‘Secrecy’, a film by Peter

Galison (Harvard) and Robb Moss (Harvard).

While not about science per se, this documen-

tary’s exploration of how government secrecy

‘corrupts’ and ‘saves’ provokes ideas concern-

ing the value-frameworks underpinning why

people keep secrets. The filmmakers used

visual triggers, animation and music to mix

personal and political narratives together in a

thematic and presented intriguing questions

as to how authors can use different media to

produce stories about ‘how things came to be’.

The conference continued with the issue of

‘how things came to be’ in scientific obser-

the distinction between observation and

experience in medieval natural sciences,

highlighting how observers focused localised

enterprises on monastic timekeeping and

the weather. Daniela Bleichmar (University of

Southern California) followed with an exami-

nation of an 18th-century network of Spanish

naturalists whose pedagogical practices pro-

moted ‘before the fact’ standards concerning

‘what to look for’, ‘how to look’ and ‘how to col-

lect’. Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for

the History of Science) explored early modern

methods used to understand and co-ordinate

the contributions of observers over space and

time. Daston opened case-studies concern-

ing Edmond Halley’s map of observation and

Denis Dodart’s ‘before the fact’ observation-

training for botanists in order to interrogate

the complications of collective observation.

Issues concerning technology were in the

minority at Pittsburgh, but a collection of

papers explored some key issues. Graeme

Gooday (University of Leeds) examined the

‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science debates through

the context of patenting electricity. Gooday

complicated notions of ‘purity’ by examining

how engineers and physicists used (and criti-

cized the use of ) patents for invention, inde-

pendence from university bureaucracies and

monetary necessities. Bruce Hevly (University

of Washington) revisited object history with

a paper on the cultures of physical and moral

discipline embodied in the American rifle in

19th and early-20th-century marksmanship

and ballistics laboratories.

The numerous papers which told stories

about scientists were complimented by a fruit-

ful discussion of the approach and contexts

through which such stories were told. Mary Jo

Nye (Oregon State University) examined the

methods used by Spencer Weart in Scientists

in Power to detail the institutional, social

and political dimensions of modern nuclear

contrasting perspective of how stories about

scientists were told, and how the field of

history of science emerged in 20th-century

Japan. Ito examined the history of science’s

social connections with nationalism, science

popularisers and the broader standing of

liberal arts education. Abena Osseo-Asare

further developed the social uses of science

with a discussion of how laboratories were

introduced into science education in Ghana.

Yet nowhere was an awareness of the histori-

cal specificity of how society interacts with sci-

ence more pronounced that in this year’s HSS

Distinguished Lecture, presented by Steven

Shapin (Harvard).

The subject for Shapin’s lecture, ‘lowering

the tone’ in the history of science, was some-

thing which he himself has been accused of.

While possibly meant as an insult, Shapin

associated great virtue with what he referred

to as a ‘noble calling’, which he believes has

been central to his and many others’ culturally

and socially constructed histories of science.

Shapin’s largely reflective paper took stock

of how the research agenda for historians of

science has changed over the past thirty years

by incorporating issues of space, cultural cred-

ibility, performance and hand/mind. Shapin

argued that rather than being subversive,

the ‘social history of science’ was a turn with

historical specificity. Science was blended with

other social projects; its practitioners were

divesting themselves of moral authority and

questioning the hagiographical tradition by

which they understood their influence and

identity. If historians of science ‘lowered the

tone’, they were only following the lead of

modern scientists who were coming to grips

with their new place in society, and, as Shapin

concluded, telling stories about human

endeavours has always been a virtuous and

noble calling.

Don Leggett

dwl2@kent.ac.uk

Steven Shapin, presenter of the HSS

Distinguished Lecture.

SAGE ROSS

Viewpoint No. 88 9

Readers’ ViewsColin A. Russell responds to Tim

Boon’s feature article on ‘Science

on Screen’ from Viewpoint 87

I was much interested to read Tim Boon’s

article on ‘Science on screen and the history

of science’. Quite rightly he emphasised the

relatively unexplored sources for historians

of science lying in film and television. Having

been a consultant for a number of films that

were designed primarily for entertainment

rather than anything else, I recognise the haz-

ards that beset actors and producers in their

efforts to ‘get it right’ wherever possible. Often

they succeed incredibly well, but where mis-

takes have crept in their identification can be

a useful student exercise. These will usually be

about straightforward matters of science (as

when I was fortunate to prevent just in time

an eminent actor from weighing a supposedly

reactive salt on an unprotected balance-pan,

instead of using a tared watch-glass!)

Mistakes in historical interpretation aren’t

quite so easy to spot, and there is often room

for differences of opinion, but attempts to

do so are valuable historical training. I have

been assured by at least one distinguished

TV producer that certain myths about the

history of science are deliberately permitted,

on the ground that they will engender greater

audience appeal (and therefore ratings)! In

the coming year exaggerated treatments

of aspects of Charles Darwin’s life may be

expected, and would provide invaluable

teaching material.

Various luminaries in the subject have from

time to time been commissioned to write

for – and perhaps appear in – programmes

for one of the mainstream TV channels. In

this country the efforts of Simon Schaffer are

noteworthy, but one could certainly wish

for more. Probably the most sustained and

protracted efforts in this direction were made

by the Open University in its early days. As I

was largely involved in setting up this scheme

perhaps I can be permitted to write a few

words on the subject.

Setting aside the OU’s early conception

as the University of the Air, it soon became

obvious that distance-students would need

unusual treatment. Given the special relation-

ship between the University and the BBC

it was clear that television could be a valu-

able supplement to printed texts, however

unconventional these might be. In the early

days of the new History of Science Group

(later Department), there seemed several

useful ways of utilising the medium. We could

‘take’ our students to places they would never

visit otherwise. They could follow Lyell in

his classic ascent of Mount Etna, they could

see the actual locations in Poland where

Copernicus did his work, and they could

explore the still visible remains of the Tyneside

chemical industry. We were fortunate to be

filming at a time when many of the historic

industrial processes were winding down, so

our students could see the manufacture of

wrought iron, steel, and other metals. We also

used archive film and models. Sometimes we

were unbelievably lucky, as when we made an

extensive visit to the last lead chamber plant

to make sulphuric acid, and discovered a few

weeks later that even that had been con-

demned. We could show hazardous experi-

ments, as one at Ealing Film Studios, with fire

brigade officers watching intensely but just

out of camera-shot. Fortunately they were

never needed.

Another advantage of film was to enable

students to see and hear such well-known

scholars as Martin Rudwick, Donald Cardwell,

Archie Clow, Alec Campbell, John Brooke, Bill

Brock and Michael Hoskin, to mention but a

few. Plenty of anecdotal evidence shows that

students will then go on and read their texts

with new interest.

These films were not all made for strict his-

tory of science courses. Many were prepared

for the ‘host’ faculty (Arts). Others were pro-

duced for courses in the history of mathemat-

ics and the history of medicine, and for a final-

year chemistry course. Clips from some were

used on odd occasions, as when Tim Boon’s

institution (the Science Museum) played a

continuous loop in one of its galleries. Much

of the broadcast material was available for use

in departments of other universities.

These programmes were regularly transmit-

ted, usually on BBC2, and for some years they

helped to improve the public image of the OU.

They were watched by casual viewers in their

thousands (eavesdroppers we called them)

and we still like to think they helped to culti-

vate a sympathy with our subject. The largest

‘official’ number of viewers to one transmis-

sion was about two million.

Looking back over 30 years it is not hard

to spot many imperfections. The very first

programmes were poor, just in black and

white, and often ‘talking heads’ only. Later

programmes in colour still used filming

techniques that infallibly date them. None of

the script writers or presenters had received

special training in broadcasting and we learnt

as we proceeded. A huge investment of time

and effort went into programme-making,

but producing staff were incredibly helpful

and we had all the resources of the BBC if we

needed them.

Those days are now a long way off and

TV has been overtaken by computer-based

technologies. Much of the OU film output

is a source of embarrassment to presenters

watching themselves 30 years later! Industrial

archaeology was perhaps unduly prominent

at first, reflecting the emphasis on the history

of technology, and this perhaps is the strength

of our kind of programme. As for the future,

moving images will still be available as in DVD.

Even a few of the older film varieties in 8 and

16 mm may have a role to play for generations

of HPS students still to come. Let’s use all the

resources available to teach a subject as rich

and diverse as the history of science.

Colin A. Russell

Open University and the

University of Cambridge

Colin.Russell@open.ac.uk

‘Outdated Newtonian Adula-

tion’: Max Wallis invites debate

Despite his personality foibles and years lost

on studies of alchemy and religious texts,

Isaac Newton is still presented as ‘the greatest

intellect the world has seen’. Rob Iliffe justifies

this view in his Newton. A very short introduc-

tion (Oxford University Press 2007) by saying

in terms of scientific accomplishments sur-

passing those of his contemporaries, Newton

‘must be ranked above Darwin and Einstein’.

Melvyn Bragg took from Iliffe that ‘Newton

has determined the way that science has to be

done’ (Radio 4’s In Our Time 3 April 2008). This

is the paradigm that Newton established the

experimental method and associated induc-

tive process, whereby the ‘laws’ of Nature are

discovered. Yet, collective scientific endeav-

ours pre-Newton had already implemented

Francis Bacon’s prescription to drop precon-

ceptions and emphasise experimental science

and inductive reasoning. Newton’s haughty

isolation, his reluctance to interact and refusal

to acknowledge others like Hooke and Huy-

gens were contrary to that healthy scientific

practice. His obscure formalised presentation

in Principia as well as his treating the Royal

Society as a personal enterprise with elitist if

‘professional’ ethos contributed in large part

to the collapse of English science in the 18th

century.

As a physicist, I see the way that Einstein’s

science developed in the first decades of last

century, in interaction with contemporaries

and pursuing self-consistent basic formula-

tions, as the best operation of science. In

comparison, Newton set back science in the

17th century, in expounding ‘laws’ instead of

principles. The ‘laws’ were just refined forms of

earlier principles from Descartes etc, but New-

ton’s axiomatic presentation (Euclid) diverged

from the real scientific process. Nowadays,

Newton’s laws persist at the elementary level,

while physics pedagogy generally favours

the Descartes-Huygens’ conserved quantities

approach, which has carried through to 19th

Century science and Einstein’s relativity.

Newton like many contemporaries believed

in the aether as the medium required to

Viewpoint No. 88 10

BooksDavid Rooney, Ruth Belville: The

Greenwich Time Lady, National

Maritime Museum, London

2008 ISBN, 978-0948065972

192 pages, £12.99.

Why not have the time delivered to you in

person? Ruth Belville (1854-1943) provided

just that service for London’s clockmakers

every Monday, bringing round the family sil-

ver pocket watch certified to give Greenwich

Observatory Time. In this well-researched little

book David Rooney explains not only why

a visit from this ‘Greenwich Time Lady’ was

preferred by some to the less personalized

synchronization available via new telecom-

munications technology. He also tells the

Belville family story as part of the introduction

of standardized time to overcome problems of

discrepant localized times e.g. that particularly

beset railways from the 1840s. Rooney shows

us that this was achieved by more than just

the technocratic dissemination of time data

from Greenwich: he also tells us the under-

recorded role of women in time-keeping,

from Maria Belville, her daughter Ruth, up to

the lady-voiced speaking clock that replaced

them.

The story begins in 1815 when Ruth’s father

John Belville (1795-1856) arrived at the Green-

wich Observatory under the care of John

Pond — his guardian, the newly appointed

Astronomer Royal. Pond arranged for the first

public Greenwich time signal in 1833, install-

ing a five foot ball on the Observatory roof

that dropped daily at 1pm. Two years later,

his successor George Biddell Airy swept away

mundane time-keeping with a programme of

astronomical research but kept Belville on to

oversee the chronometers. As Airy no longer

tolerated frequent visits from City clockmakers

to check the time, the entrepreneurial Belville

purchased a 1794 John Arnold watch and took

the time directly out to them. Upon Belville’s

death, his third wife Maria carried on the work

until 1892 when her daughter Ruth took up

the weekly duty of carrying ‘Arnold’ around

the City to dozens of loyal fee-paying clients.

By the time Ruth inherited this thriving

business, the rival ‘Standard Time Company’

had been communicating time telegraphically

Why then did anyone still need Ruth’s serv-

ices? Somehow her business even survived

the BBC wireless Greenwich time broadcasts

that began in 1923 with the five second count

down of a male announcer, supplemented in

1924 by the intoning of Big Ben and advent of

the genderless ‘pips’. One key factor was that

the telegraphic time distribution was rather

less reliable than historians have hitherto

assumed; similar errors sometimes even

afflicted the BBC wireless service. Implicit in

Rooney’s account is that Ruth’s customers

trusted her as a time keeper rather more than

new technological systems bedevilled by a

fallible complexity. Moreover, her diplomatic

skills were also essential, especially when an

unwelcome press exposé of her activities in

1908 could have jeopardized the goodwill of

Astronomer Royal, William Christie and thus

the Observatory’s co-operation in her work.

What spelled the demise of Ruth’s service,

suggests Rooney, was the arrival of the tel-

ephonic speaking clock ‘T.I.M.’ in 1936, voiced

by glamorized telephone exchange operator,

Ethel Cain. In the next twelve month 20 mil-

lion calls were made to hear her pre-recorded

announcements – in contrast to the 2500

personal calls made by Ruth Belville to her

dwindling clientele. Finally, the plucky octo-

genarian retired from the bomb-torn streets

of London in 1940. She died alone three years

later from carbon monoxide poisoning due to

a gas lamp that had clogged on the low set-

ting recommended for wartime economy. A

press report titled ‘Human “T.I.M.” Found Dead’

noted that an old silver pocket watch lay next

to her body.

Although concluded in sadness, the story of

the Greenwich Time Lady was neither wasted

nor unimportant. Her life’s work should matter

to us just as much as those of the once vital

but now extinct roles of female telegraph

clerks, computers and telephone switchboard

operators who set the standards of reliability

that we have now come to expect of our eve-

ryday technologies.

Graeme Gooday

University of Leeds

G.J.N.Gooday@leeds.ac.uk

transmit attraction or repulsion between

separated celestial bodies. It was Robert

Hooke who argued for the principle of univer-

sal attraction, as early as 1666. Hooke’s two

further principles were that all bodies move in

straight lines till deflected by some force and

that the attractive force is stronger for closer

bodies. By 1679 when he wrote to Newton

asking him if he could show the path would

be closed (in an ellipse) to explain the Earth’s

motion, Hooke disclosed he had the inverse

square law in mind. Iliffe agrees the 1679-80

exchanges show Hooke deserved far more

credit than Newton ‘granted him in forging the

basic elements of orbital dynamics’.

Thus Newton took ‘his’ three laws of dynam-

ics and law of gravitation from others. He took

light to be globules, on the analogy between

light and particle dynamics, which held back

the development of the correct wave theory

of light that Huygens promoted. Overall, we

should judge that Hooke, Grimaldi and Huy-

gens respectively, had a better description of

interference, diffraction and double refraction

than had Newton.

Newton’s call to avoid hypotheses (hypoth-

eses non fingo) is sometimes hailed as a prin-

ciple of science (at least in the Occam’s razor

version). It was valid only as a call for experi-

mentation; working assumptions and ‘models’

are pretty well universal. Testing hypotheses

is a specific part of scientific practice. While

Newton did go for minimising assumptions

and minimal sets of laws, he was still quite free

with hypotheses, as in assuming light globules

of specific colours with sides and magnetic

properties. In the 1717 edition of Opticks, he

returned to postulating an aether of repelling

particles as the cause of gravity.

Newton pioneered mathematical analysis

and applications as well as optical experi-

mentation. But Hooke was the more creative

and wide-ranging experimenter, wrongly

denigrated by Newton’s friends. Newton’s

science explanations were faulty or adopted

from others. His general axiomatic formula-

tion was inferior to one based on principles,

he failed to scrutinise his own hypotheses and

discouraged others from seeking explana-

tions. Massimo Mazzotti challenged New-

ton’s ‘totemic image’ (BJHS 40(1): 105–111,

March 2000) as stemming from his circle of

friends and disciples who crafted the illusion

of a towering genius. Why does the myth of

Newton as pre-eminent scientist prevail even

today, with leading biographers still unable

to see the priority and sometimes superiority

of his contemporaries? Let’s look forward to

reassessment based on the recently recovered

Royal Society Hooke papers.

Max Wallis

University of Cardiff

wallismk@cf.ac.uk

Reviews

Viewpoint No. 88 11

Television‘Einstein and Eddington’ (BBC2),

Saturday 22 November 2008,

9:10pm.

Writer Peter Moffat and Director Philip Martin’s

BBC/HBO dramatisation Einstein and Edding-

ton elegantly brought Eddington’s champion-

ing of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity

to our television screens in November 2008.

Although far from historically accurate, it nev-

ertheless presented a thoroughly captivating

and entertaining story, with science, war, love,

triumph and tragedy skilfully interwoven into

a satisfying 90 minute melange.

The film covered the lives of English astron-

omer Arthur Eddington and the Swiss physi-

cist Albert Einstein through two interwoven

narratives, one focused on England (largely

Cambridge) and the other on Zurich and then

Berlin. It began in 1913/14 with the onset of

the war and Einstein’s move from Zurich to

Berlin, and ended with the protagonists meet-

ing for the first time during Einstein’s visit to

England in 1921. Eddington was wonderfully

played by David Tennant (of Dr. Who fame) as

a reserved pacifist, though it was Andy Serkis

(Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings

trilogy) as a quirky playful Einstein who stole

the show.

The central motif was the contrast between

Einstein and Eddington’s pacifism and belief

in the inherent internationalism of science,

and the national rivalry between Germany

and Britain. This rivalry was brought out in

various ways, but most prominently through

the nationalist attitudes of several scientists

— Max Planck, Fritz Haber, and Oliver Lodge.

Eddington’s story interspersed his champion-

ing of Einstein’s Relativity in England with the

clash between his Quakerism and the war

atmosphere. The Einstein thread focused on

his struggle with the mathematics of General

Relativity, his personal relationships, and the

co-option of German science into the German

war effort. This co-option was alluded to in

several ways: Max Planck’s enticement of

Einstein from Zurich to Berlin was portrayed

as being part of a nationalistic impulse; the

University of Berlin, where Einstein was based

during the war, was portrayed as seeped

in militarism; Planck’s attempt to obtain

Einstein’s signature on the infamous October

1914 petition ‘Appeal to the Cultured World’

was alluded to, as was Fritz Haber’s research

into poisonous gas. The film culminated in

Eddington’s 1919 expedition to West Africa

in order to photograph the stars around the

sun during a complete solar eclipse and so

validate Einstein’s Relativistic predictions of

the bending of light around massive bodies.

The production had, understandably, taken

many liberties with facts in order to present

a complex story in an engaging and compre-

hensible manner. For example, in actuality:

Einstein’s relationship to Elsa began before

his move to Berlin; there is no evidence that

Eddington was homosexual; and astronomer

Oliver Lodge was much less connected with

Cambridge than portrayed in the film (and his

son was killed by shrapnel not gas). Lodge’s

opposition to Eddington and hostility to Gen-

eral Relativity was overplayed, and De Witter’s

role in transmitting Einstein’s General Theory

of Relativity to England was omitted. The most

liberties were taken with the circumstances

surrounding the West African expedition and

the announcement of its results. The notion

that Einstein’s theory could be tested by the

measurement of the bending of starlight

during a solar eclipse had in fact been around

for many years, and was not first suggested

by Eddington. A German expedition had

attempted, but failed, to make this very meas-

urement in 1914. The British government (and

not just astronomers, as depicted) funded

two expeditions in 1919 - the one to Brazil

has been omitted from the film, though it too

provided important results. Astronomer Frank

Dyson is depicted as accompanying Edding-

ton to Africa, when in actuality he did not. The

issue at stake was not whether or not the stars

would shift their positions around an eclipse

(as depicted in the film), but by how much.

Newtonian mechanics predicted an amount

roughly half that of Einstein’s General Relativ-

ity. The analysis of the results took days, not

minutes, and was announced by Dyson, not

Eddington, to the Royal Society. The results

were also not as unambiguous as presented.

Perhaps of most concern, however, are two

impressions given by the film. Its portrayal

of the militarisation of German science may

leave viewers with the impression that Britain

pressed science and industry into its war effort

to a significantly lesser degree than Germany,

or perhaps not at all. This, we know now, was

not true – science and industry were equally

important to the British war effort. Secondly,

the film suggested that English protagonists

viewed the overthrow of Newtonian mechan-

ics by General Relativity as part of a wider turn

from certainty to uncertainty in the modern

world. This was presented as one reason for

the wavering of Eddington’s faith in God,

and for Oliver Lodge’s opposition to General

Relativity. Yet there is little historical evidence

to suggest that General Relativity was seen by

British astronomers or physicists to be more

uncertain and less deterministic than Newto-

nian mechanics, and as portending the dawn

of a more uncertain world. It seems to me that

in this regard the writer has projected back to

this time later (1920s) concerns over a differ-

ent science – that of quantum mechanics, and

particularly the much-publicised debates over

its ‘Copenhagen interpretation’.

Waqar Zaidi

Imperial College London

syed.w.zaidi02@imperial.ac.uk

David Tennant as Arthur Eddington (Courtesy of Ian Johnson Publicity).

Viewpoint No. 88 12

Anniversaries for 2010A fuller list of anniversaries will be available

on our website at www.bshs.org.uk/bshs/

publications/newsletter. Biographies and

data were compiled by Rebekah Higgitt,

Rosemary Wall and Catharine Haines.

Royal Society of LondonThe 350th anniversary of the official founding of the Royal

Society will be celebrated on 28 November 2010. The Society’s

formation arose from the existing ‘invisible college’ of natural

philosophers (including Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, John Wal-

lis, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and William

Petty) who met from the mid-1640s to discuss the ideas of

Francis Bacon. In 1660, twelve of these men met at Gresham

College after a lecture by Wren, the Gresham Professor of As-

tronomy, and decided to found ‘a Colledge for the Promoting

of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning’. The Society

met weekly to discuss ideas and witness experiments. It began

publishing its journal, Philosophical Transactions, in 1665, now

the longest-running scientific journal in existence. The Society

is celebrating its 350th birthday with an ambitious campaign

to strengthen future science.

Further information: http://royalsociety.org

Caius, John 1510-1573 Medicine

Ceulen, Ludolph van 1540-1610 Mathematics

Ricci, Matteo 1552-1610 Mathematics, astronomy

Cunitz, Maria 1610-1664 Astronomy

Royal Society of London

founded

1660

Oughtred, William 1575-1660 Mathematics

Godfrey, Ambrose, the

elder

1660-1741 Chemistry

Davies, Robert 1658-1710 Naturalist and antiquary

1639-1710 Astronomy

Cramer, Johann Andreas 1710-1777 Metallurgist

Cullen, William 1710-1790 Chemistry, medicine

Ferguson, James 1710-1776 Astronomy

Beddoes, Thomas 1760-1808 Chemistry, medicine

Harriman, John 1760-1831 Botany

Bayly, William 1738-1810 Astronomy

Cavendish, Henry 1731-1810 Natural philosopher

Gordon, Cuthbert 1730-1810 Industrial chemistry

Ritter, Johann Wilhelm 1776-1810 Electrochemistry

Gosse, Philip Henry 1810-1888 Zoology

Hastings, Barbara Rawdon 1810-1858 Geology , fossil collecting

Hyrtl, Joseph 1810-1894 Anatomy

Jones, Thomas Rymer 1810-1880 Physiology, morphology

Regnault, Henri Victor 1810-1878 Chemistry

400 years

300 years

500 years

250 years

350 years

2010 sees the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Scottish

astronomer and instrument maker James Ferguson. Educated

early interest in mechanics. However, on moving to Edinburgh

in 1734, he was initially a painter of portrait miniatures. Subse-

quently, at Inverness, he invented a cardboard instrument for

showing the motions and positions of the sun and moon, called

the Astronomical Rotula, which brought him to the attention

of Colin Maclaurin. He moved to London in 1743, where he

continued to paint, devise instruments, publish papers and give

lectures. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1763 and

was one of the most successful popular lecturers and writers on

scientific subjects.

Further reading: J. R. Millburn, Wheelwright of the heavens: the

life and work of James Ferguson (London, 1988).

James Ferguson

200 years

James Ferguson,

PW3436,

© National

Maritime Museum,

Greenwich,

London.

Viewpoint No. 88 13

Joseph Wilson Swan

makes incandescent lamp

using a carbon filament

1860

Thomas Addison c.1793-1860 Medicine

Powell, Baden 1796-1860 Mathematics

Spence, William 1782-1860 Entomology

Bayliss, William Maddock 1860-1924 Physiology

Bloxham, William Pop-

plewell

1860-1913 Chemistry

1860-1944 Psychology

Einthoven, Willem 1860-1927 Physiology, medicine

Haffkine, Waldemar 1860-1930 Bacteriology, zoology

Haldane, John Scott 1860-1936 Physiology

Lemon, Margaretta 1860-1953 Ornithology

Perkin, William Henry 1860-1929 Chemistry

Thomas Hunt Morgan dis-

covers the white-eye sex

linkage in Drosophila

1910

Blackwell, Elizabeth 1821-1910 Medicine

Huggins, William 1824-1910 Astronomy

James, William 1842-1910 Psychology

Robert

1843-1910 Bacteriology, medicine

Nightingale, Florence 1820-1910 Statistics, nursing

Adamson, Joy 1910-1980 Conservation, botanical art

Chandrasekhar, Subrah-

manyan

1910-1995 Mathematics, astrophysics

Conway, Verona 1910-1986 Botany

Donald, Ian 1910-1987 Obstetrics, ultrasound

Hodgkin, Dorothy 1910-1994 Chemistry, crystallography

Contraceptive pill launched 1960

Jones, Harold Spencer 1890-1960 Astronomy

1882-1960 Psychology

Ross, Frank Elmore 1874-1960 Astronomy

Singer, Charles Joseph 1876-1960 History of medicine and

science

100 years

Henry CavendishThe 200th anniversary of Cavendish’s death will be remem-bered in 2010. He was born in Nice, as the third son of William, second duke of Devonshire. The family later returned to Lon-don, and Cavendish was educated by tutor, at Hackney Acad-emy and at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Of independent means, Cavendish settled in London and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1760. His wide-ranging scientific work focused on chemical analysis — especially the nature of ‘airs’, water and heat — electrical phenomena, geodesy and astronomy. The fa-mous Cavendish Experiment was devised in order to measure the density of the earth. He died at Clapham Common and left an estate of almost £1million. Further reading: C. Jungnickel and R. McCormmach, Cavendish (Philadelphia, 1996).

Florence NightingaleThe 100th centenary of Florence Nightingale’s death and the

150th anniversary of the Nightingale School of Nursing will

both be commemorated in 2010. Nightingale is not only

popularly known as the founder of modern nursing, but was

also a reformer of the health of the army, involved in hospital

design, writing in journals such as The Builder, and was a pio-

neer of making statistics accessible to a wider audience. She

probably invented the pie-chart with her coxcomb diagrams of

mortality in the Crimea.

Further reading: Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: the

woman and her legend (London, 2008).

Dorothy HodgkinThe chemist and crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin was

born nearly a century ago in Egypt, where she lived until the

outbreak of the First World War. She was educated in vari-

ous schools and, briefly, by her mother, but set up her own

chemistry laboratory at home before successfully fighting to

continue chemistry at her mixed, state-run secondary school.

She entered Somerville College, Oxford, in 1928 and after grad-

uation became a research student in Cambridge, specialising

in x-ray crystallography. She returned to Oxford in 1934 and

gained funding to set up her own laboratory, where she and

her research group analysed the structure of insulin, penicillin

and other biomolecules.

Further reading: G. Ferry, Dorothy Hodgkin: a life (London,

1998).

150 years

50 years

Dorothy Hodgkin,

Courtesy of Pug-

wash Conferences

on Science and

World Affairs.

Viewpoint No. 88 14

HPSTM People: The Questionnaire

Who or what first turned you towards the

History of Science, Technology and Medi-

cine (HSTM)?

Even by the time I had finished my BA in

History at Durham and had developed an

interest in the history of ideas, I didn’t know

HSTM existed. Fortunately, though, a friend

told me how much she had enjoyed her

undergraduate lectures with one Professor

Century Studies, I asked him to supervise

a term paper and then my dissertation. By

then – despite taking three years out of

academia – I was hooked and knew that I

would be back for more.

What’s your best dinner-table HSTM story?

It depends on whose table, and what time

of the evening. When you’re in the business

of investigating myths and reputations it

can be difficult to deliver anecdotes con-

vincingly before a few glasses of wine...

What has been your best career moment?

It’s still early days in my professional career,

so I hope that there is more to come. How-

ever, finishing the PhD, getting a job and

publishing a book were all major triumphs.

It has also been wonderful to have been

invited to relaunch the BSHS newsletter as

Viewpoint.

And worst?

I had a low period during the PhD – I think

everyone has a point when they question

the validity of their project and their ability

to see it through.

Which historical person would you most

like to meet?

Augustus De Morgan was my great favour-

ite during my PhD research. I would like to

join him and his wife Sophia on one of the

evenings that they visited the Airys and

Sheepshankses. I could join Richarda Airy’s

singing, while Augustus accompanied us

on the flute. Or we could try some table-

turning. De Morgan is often seen as a stuffy

and self-righteous Victorian, but I enjoyed

the wit of his letters and drawings and

admired many of his principles.

What should every 16-year-old know about

HSTM?

That it exists! Ideally, before they leave

school, everyone should have had a chance

to understand that science has a history,

and that it was created and used by hu-

mans in particular contexts.

If you did not work in HSTM, what other

career might you choose?

Before my PhD I worked in archives and

libraries and would have been happy if I had

stayed, although I suspect that I would have

ended up doing historical research either

way. Of course there’s also my all-singing,

all-dancing, all-acting alternative life ...

What are your favourite HSTM books?

Adrian Desmond’s biographies of Huxley

kept me tied to HSTM in the years between

my Masters and the PhD and, like several of

the subjects of Viewpoint’s Questionnaire,

I was much inspired by Jim Secord’s Victo-

rian Sensation. In a different context, I am

very fond of the Olby, Cantor, Christie and

Hodge Companion to the History of Science,

which has frequently come in handy.

What would you do to strengthen HSTM as

a discipline?

As a historian by training, I would like to

see more history of science within straight

history degrees. I think both disciplines

would benefit enormously. As a newcomer

to the world of museums, I would like more

sophisticated stories about past science to

be presented to the public. I have discov-

ered how tempting it is to try to catch

people’s attention with simplified and

mythologized accounts, but I think we can

do better than that.

How do you see the future shape of HSTM?

I think that HSTM is in pretty good shape,

although the recent period of expansion

and rising profile is perhaps slackening off.

However, I’m not sure that I have been in

the field long enough to make any sweep-

ing pronouncements!

Rebekah Higgitt was editor of

Viewpoint from its launch in

February 2006 until the end of

2008. She completed her PhD

at Imperial College London in

2004 and, after a postdoctoral

research fellowship at the Uni-

versity of Edinburgh, started as

Curator of History of Science

and Technology at the Royal

Observatory Greenwich in May

2008. Since 2001 she has been

successively BSHS Membership

Secretary, Council Member and

Newsletter Editor.

Viewpoint No. 88 15

Listings

Re-treading Darwin’s geological fieldwork.

Two related historical field meetings in June

2009 will mark the Darwin bicentenary by

evaluating his most important post-Beagle

fieldwork projects on the ground, in the light

of other 19th-century research. (1) N. W.

Midlands and North Wales, 19-24 June, led

by Peter Worsley (Reading). Shrewsbury and

Maer, for Darwin’s and his wife’s family homes;

Snowdonia, for his 1842 fieldwork, and

evidence relevant to early glacial theories. For

further information, email p.worsley@reading.

ac.uk. (2) Glen Roy, Scotland, 26-29 June, led

by Martin Rudwick (Cambridge) and Adrian

Palmer (Royal Holloway, London). Glen Roy

and the surrounding area of the Highlands, for

Darwin’s 1838 fieldwork, and his interpreta-

tion of the famous “Parallel Roads” as marine

beaches, in conflict with earlier lake-beach

and later glacial-lake interpretations. The

number of places for both meetings will be

strictly limited. For further information, email

a.palmer@rhul.ac.uk.

NewsMaking Visible Embryos Online

Exhibition

Making Visible Embryos http://www.hps.cam.

ac.uk/visibleembryos/ is an online

exhibition by Tatjana Buklijas and Nick Hopwood,

Department of History and Philosophy of Sci-

ence, University of Cambridge, with support

from the Wellcome Trust.

Images of human embryos are everywhere

today: in newspapers, clinics, classrooms,

laboratories, baby albums and on the internet.

Debates about abortion, evolution, assisted

conception and stem cells have made these

representations controversial, but they are

also routine. We tend to take them for granted.

Yet 250 years ago human development was

nowhere to be seen.

This online exhibition is about how embryo

images were produced and made to represent

some of the most potent biomedical objects

and subjects of our time. It contextualizes

such icons as Ernst Haeckel’s allegedly forged

Darwinist grids and Lennart Nilsson’s ‘drama

of life before birth’ on a 1965 cover of Life

magazine. It also interprets over 120 now

little-known drawings, engravings, woodcuts,

The New York artist and visual art theorist

Suzanne Anker uses scientific concepts

and raw laboratory output to create pieces

that comment on human embryological and

evolutionary origins, the language of

the genetic code and fluid corporeality

(see http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/visibleem-

bryos/s8_4.html). This photograph shows

‘Cubist baby’, a sculpture from her series

‘Origins and futures’, size: 28’’x 39’’x 20’’.

paintings, wax models, X-rays and ultrasound

scans from the fifteenth to the twenty-first

century. It displays the work of making visible

embryos.

Contact: hps-embryo@lists.cam.ac.uk

Journals looking for a good home

‘I have long runs of the following titles avail-

able FREE to any member who is able to

collect:

British Journal for the History of Science

Discovery

Endeavour

ISIS

Scientific American

Notes and Records of the Royal Society

Though these are at no charge, a small

contribution to my favourite charity (Cancer

Stuart Baldwin, PhC., BSc (Open), FGS, FLS, FRI

18 School Road, Wickham Bishops, WITHAM,

Essex, England, CM8 3NU

Tel: 01621 891526 Fax: 01621 891522

Directions to Stuart can be found on his web-

site: www.secondhandsciencebooks.com

New Year’s Honour

Doron Swade has been awarded an MBE for

his contributions to the History of Comput-

ing. Whilst working as a Curator at the Science

Museum, he built a replica of Babbage’s Differ-

ence Engine for the Museum.

News from the National

Cataloguing Unit for the Archives

of Contemporary Scientists

During 2008 many cataloguing projects were

completed and new ones begun, particu-

larly focusing on ecology, genetics, physics

and physiology. Six archive collections were

completed — the papers of physicist Sir Wil-

liam Mitchell, geneticist Malcolm Ferguson-

Smith, nature conservationist Sir Peter Scott

(supplementary papers), ethologist Nikolaas

E. Raymond Andrew. Current activity includes

cataloguing the papers of the physiologists

botanist and ecologist Professor Arthur Willis,

and the physicists Sir Alan Cook, Lord Marshall

and Sir Joseph Rotblat.

The NCUACS would like to thank funders

including the Arts and Humanities Research

Council, Pugwash organisations, the Wellcome

Trust, the Foyle Foundation, the British Eco-

logical Society, Sheffield University Library, the

Alexander Library, Department of Zoology,

Oxford University, the Biochemical Society

and the Institute of Physics.

The Long View: 400 Years of the Telescope

16-17 July 2009, National Maritime Museum,

Greenwich.

See http://www.nmm.ac.uk/researchers/con-

ferences-and-seminars/telescope-conference

for more information and for a preliminary list

of speakers.

Conferences

Field Meetings

Darwin 200See the following webpages for information

regarding events celebrating Charles Darwin’s

200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of

the publication of The Origin of the Species:

Darwin 200

http://www.darwin200.org

Darwin Now - British Council

http://www.britishcouncil.org/darwin-

homepage.htm

Cambridge Darwin Festival

http://www.darwin2009.cam.ac.uk

British Society for the History of Science

Annual Conference, 2009

2-5 July 2009, University of Leicester

The BSHS Annual Conference will take

place at Stamford Hall, University of

Leicester from 2-5 July 2009.

The conference programme will include

parallel themed sessions, plenary lectures,

education and outreach activities, and a

dinner at the National Space Centre.

Further details: http://www.bshs.org.

uk/bshs/conferences/annual_confer-

ence/2009_leicester/index.html

Viewpoint No. 88 16

The British Journal for the History of Science

The March issue of BJHS will contain the following, plus reviews:

The British Society for the History of ScienceAll enquiries to the BSHS Executive Secretary, British Society for the History of Science, PO Box 3401, Norwich,

You can join online, paying by credit or debit card at www.bshs.org.uk/bshs/join_the_bshs. Alternatively you can download a direct debit mandate form.

The British Society for the History of Science is registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee, No. 562208,

Viewpoint: the Newsletter of the BSHSContributionsAll contributions and correspondence should be sent to the Editor, Dr Rosemary Wall, Florence Nightingale

London, SE1 8WA; newsletter@bshs.org.uk. Electronic communication is preferred. Viewpoint is issued three

times a year – in February, June and October. The next issue will be in June 2009 and the deadline for copy is

17th April 2009.

CirculationEnquiries about circulation should be sent to the BSHS Executive Secretary, British Society for the History of

Science, PO Box 3401, Norwich, NR7 7JF. Viewpoint is free to BSHS members and is priced £10.00 a year (three

issues) for non-members.

AdvertisementsThe Editor will consider advertisements regarding new appointments but, as a general rule, other advertisements are not printed in this

publication. However, for an appropriate charge, leaflets advertising suitable events, publications etc. can be sent out with Viewpoint,

subject to size and postage restrictions: full details are available from the BSHS Executive Secretary; execsec@bshs.org.uk.

Copyright© The British Society for the History of Science Ltd. 2009. Extracts not exceeding the equivalent of a normal paragraph may be repro-

duced elsewhere providing acknowledgement is given to Viewpoint: the Newsletter of the British Society for the History of Science.

DisclaimerAny views expressed in Viewpoint are those of the Editor or named contributor and not those of the council or membership of the BSHS.

Every effort is made to provide accurate information, but no responsibility is accepted by the Editor or Council for omissions or errors.

www.bshs.org.uk/bjhs